Israel strikes Beirut’s southern suburbs after issuing a blanket
evacuation order
[March 06, 2026]
By ABBY SEWELL and FADI TAWIL
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched a series of strikes on the southern
suburbs of Beirut Thursday after ordering all residents of the densely
populated area to evacuate.
Traffic was gridlocked in Lebanon 's capital on Thursday as panicked
residents tried to flee after Israel's military issued an evacuation
notice telling residents to “save your lives and evacuate your homes
immediately,” and specified which routes they should take to escape.
Hours later, strikes began to hit the Beirut suburbs.
Since the resurgence of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah
militant group, Israel has struck sites in Beirut’s suburbs and issued a
blanket warning for residents south of the Litani River — an area in
southern Lebanon stretching to the border with Israel — to evacuate
their homes, but had not previously issued a blanket evacuation order
for Beirut’s southern suburbs.
After the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran triggered a
new war in the Middle East, Hezbollah launched missiles and drones into
Israel on Monday for the first time in over a year, and Israel has
retaliated with bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern
suburbs.
The conflict had claimed 123 lives and forced the displacement of more
than 83,000 people in Lebanon before Thursday's evacuation order.
Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich warned Thursday
that the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong
presence will look like Khan Younis, a city in Gaza that Israel has
decimated during the war triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack
in southern Israel.
“You wanted to bring hell on us, we are bringing hell on you,” Smotrich
said as he toured towns on Israel’s border with Lebanon. “Dahiyeh will
look like Khan Younis, and our citizens of the north will live in peace
and quiet.”
The evacuation order rattled Lebanese authorities, with President Joseph
Aoun calling his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in an urgent bid to
halt the anticipated widespread strikes, according to a statement from
his office.
Macron issued a statement calling for an end to the conflict and
announcing that Paris will send aid to Lebanon, in the first apparent
diplomatic endeavor to end the boiling conflict.
“Hezbollah must immediately cease its fire toward Israel. Israel must
refrain from any ground intervention or large-scale operation on
Lebanese territory,” the French president said in a post on X, adding
that he has communicated with U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanon's top political leadership.
He called on the militant group to disarm and said he supports Beirut's
endeavors to deploy the military to assert full control over the
country's territory.
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Cars sit in traffic on a highway as residents flee Israeli
airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Thursday,
March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Hadi Kaakour, a resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs who was
fleeing said he is not sure that even after leaving he will be safe.
“We don’t put anything past them (Israel), they will strike us no
matter where we go,” he said.
Others expressed frustration at Lebanon being pulled into the larger
war in the Middle East.
“We got sucked into a mess that we have nothing to do with,” said
Yousef Nabulsi, another fleeing resident. “People have been
displaced and are now staying on the streets, and this is wrong.”
U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon have seen and heard clashes in
the area as more Israeli forces have moved across the border, a
spokesperson for the peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL said
Thursday. It was the first confirmation of combat taking place.
“Ground combat was observed west of Kfar Kila,” a village near the
border with Israel, overnight, which included “firing of shots,”
UNIFIL spokesperson Tilak Pokharel said. In Khiyam, a town about 5
kilometers (3 miles) from the border with Israel, he said
peacekeepers saw “air attacks and flares and heard explosions.”
On Tuesday, Israel said it sent additional troops into southern
Lebanon. Israeli forces had already been occupying several border
points in Lebanon since a U.S.-brokered November 2024 ceasefire
halted the previous Israel-Hezbollah war.
The Lebanese army has pulled back from the border as the Israeli
troops moved in, while Hezbollah has issued a series of statements
announcing attacks on Israeli troops attempting to advance. The
Iran-backed militant group also published a video showing a tank
being struck by a missile.
The Israeli army on Wednesday said two of its soldiers were wounded
by anti-tank fire in Lebanon and on Thursday said two more were
evacuated after being wounded in a battle in southern Lebanon.
—
Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to
this report.
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